The Federal Government has announced plans to overhaul the accreditation system for tertiary institutions, warning universities, polytechnics and colleges of education against using borrowed staff, equipment or facilities to secure accreditation approval.
The Minister of Education, Dr Tunji Alausa, disclosed this on Wednesday while inaugurating a Ministerial Committee on Strengthening Accreditation and Quality Assurance Systems for Tertiary Institutions in Nigeria.
Alausa said the government was determined to replace the current periodic accreditation model with a continuous, digital and evidence-based system that would provide regulators with a more accurate picture of the capacity of tertiary institutions.
He said the existing process, which is largely conducted every three to five years, had created opportunities for some institutions to temporarily assemble resources ahead of accreditation visits.
According to the minister, such practices undermine the credibility of the education system and fail to reflect the conditions students encounter throughout the academic year.
Alausa said institutions would no longer be allowed to create a temporary appearance of compliance simply because an accreditation team was visiting.
“An institution should not be able to prepare a temporary picture of itself simply for the purpose of an accreditation visit. Sadly, this is what persists in the majority of instances,” he said.
He warned against the temporary movement or borrowing of academic and non-academic staff, laboratory equipment, workshop facilities, library materials and other infrastructure solely to satisfy accreditation requirements.
The minister said resources presented during accreditation must represent the institution’s “actual and sustainable capacity.”
To strengthen the process, he said the government would deploy digital technologies, including geospatial mapping, geotagging and digital identification, to verify institutional facilities, equipment and personnel.
Alausa explained that critical equipment presented by institutions would be digitally identified and linked to specific locations, allowing regulators to verify whether such resources genuinely belong to the institution.
He also proposed a digital staff-verification framework that would establish the identity and institutional affiliation of personnel presented during accreditation exercises.
The minister said the framework could leverage national identity infrastructure, including the National Identification Number and BVN systems, subject to applicable data-protection laws.
He said the system should be capable of identifying cases where an individual is presented as full-time staff by multiple institutions.
Alausa said the ultimate objective was to transform accreditation from a periodic event into a continuous quality-assurance mechanism.
Under the proposed system, institutions would be required to maintain prescribed standards throughout the year rather than make temporary preparations whenever accreditation teams were scheduled to visit.
He said a central digital platform would enable regulators to continuously update and verify information relating to staffing, laboratories, workshops, infrastructure and equipment.
“The physical visit will remain important, but it should increasingly serve to validate verified data rather than begin the verification process from scratch,” he said.
The minister said the reform would also help the National Universities Commission, National Board for Technical Education and National Commission for Colleges of Education maintain reliable institutional records rather than depend largely on information gathered during periodic visits.
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Alausa disclosed that the Ministry of Education had already engaged the three major tertiary education regulatory agencies as well as professional regulatory bodies on the proposed reforms.
He added that the government was awaiting further advice from the Attorney-General of the Federation on some aspects of the initiative.
According to him, establishing a centralised digital platform as a “single source of truth” for verified institutional data would reduce regulatory conflicts and improve coordination among agencies.
“The accreditation toolkits that we have been using were developed decades ago. We see conflicts arising,” the minister said.
He charged the newly inaugurated committee to review the accreditation processes of the NUC, NBTE and NCCE and submit practical recommendations for modernising the system.
Earlier, the Director of Polytechnic Education in the Federal Ministry of Education, Amy Igwe, said the committee was expected to help create a more transparent and credible accreditation framework.
Igwe acknowledged concerns over institutions temporarily moving or borrowing staff and resources during accreditation exercises, saying the proposed reforms would help eliminate such practices.
She urged members of the committee to commit their time and expertise to building an accreditation system capable of protecting the interests of Nigerian students.
Alausa said the reform was ultimately about safeguarding the integrity of tertiary education and ensuring that students receive quality education in institutions that genuinely possess the facilities, personnel and resources they claim to have.
“Technology should enable us to move from declarations to verification and from assumptions to evidence,” he said.
He added that the goal was to establish an accreditation system that is credible, transparent, technology-driven, efficient and based on independently verifiable evidence.